Marking Time
by Clio83
Summary: This is an AU fic I wrote one night after watching The Hand of Fear. Sarah's been left behind but this time the Doctor comes back - better late than never!


This is the first fanfic I wrote and it's been sitting on my computer for the last 18 months. This is what I would have liked to have happened after Hand of Fear!! I realise Sarah was from 1980 but I wrote this thinking of the time she was in the actual show and by the time I remembered I liked the 1970s setting too much to change it (blame Life on Mars for the nostalgia for a era I didn't even live through...)

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Pushing the bolt safely across Sarah dropped her keys onto the hall table and went through to the kitchen. She had been chasing interviews all afternoon, no mysterious disappearances, no alien invasions or scientific breakthroughs, just local politics – the everyday minutiae of life on Earth. In the kitchen she lit the gas and filled the kettle, placing it on the cooker to boil as she kicked off her shoes. It had been a while since she'd chased anything more exciting than the candidates for the local elections. She could remember a time when a chase had meant something more dangerous, and yet, infinitely more exciting. She looked out of the small kitchen window onto the tangled garden (somehow she never had the time or energy to tidy it) and thought over the rest of her week. There was a piece she needed to write for the _Enquirer_ and at some point she needed to take her car to the garage. Whoever had thought of the name 'Robin Reliant' had not been without a sense of humour – although it was not the first machine to regularly let her down…

She sighed and turned away from the window, hearing the thin whistle of the kettle. It never took long for her thoughts to turn back to that time; it was always there, in the back of her mind. She might be in a queue in the bank, only to recall some man or woman from a far away planet and fight in the features of the clerk. Sometimes it was as she rifled through her wardrobe, pulling out clothes long since unworn and recognising some item from distant travels now screwed up and bundled out of sight, but still bearing tell tale tears and marks from where she had not been able to bring herself to throw them away. Then there were her meetings with Harry and the Brigadier. She had written several books and articles on UNIT and still kept in touch with her friends there. They were the only people with whom she could openly discuss her strange past, the only people who understood about him, and the things she had seen. She poured the tea and carried it through to the sitting room. Placing it on the side table she switched on her television set and kneeling, lit the fire. Although it was only just October, winter had come in earnest. Already her bedroom was freezing in the mornings, despite the extra blankets. To the sound of _'Tomorrow's World'_ Sarah sipped her tea and sorted through her notes from that day, occasionally making an additional comment in her small, even handwriting. It was 1978. And this was her life.

But it hadn't always been this way. And sometimes as she lay awake in her narrow bed, and even when she slept, she remembered how else it could be. When people spoke of 'living on Earth', of being human, they used the words much as one would say 'the sky is blue' or 'the earth is round'. It was just a fact, meaningless words – because they did not know that anything else was possible. In their imaginations they explored the stars, encountered alien species and travelled into the past and future, but in reality, in the solid, muted reality of the twentieth century Earth was, quite literally, their whole world and its people explored continents and mountains, not far away galaxies. But for Sarah this could never be enough. When she spoke of 'living on Earth' she knew it was one home out of billions, when she called herself human she was asserting those values and characteristics which she had measured against countless other life forms, societies and ideals. For Sarah, Earth could never be her whole world because she had seen so many others. When others looked into the night sky they knew, quite logically, that there must be life out there. When Sarah looked she knew there were cities and alien forests, teeming with life. She knew that wars were being fought, and perhaps the fate of whole galaxies decided while the people of Earth went on oblivious. Somewhere out there she was remembered for actions far in the future, or the past and when her present self was long dead, she would still be yet to appear in some far flung planet, or colony, to help save the day and then to disappear once more, leaving nothing behind her.

It had been two years since he had left her here, stranded on Earth. She sometimes wondered how she could feel stranded on her own planet, but she did. When she looked at the stars through her bedroom window she did think of far off planets and civilisations, but most of all she thought of the Doctor, of the TARDIS spinning through the vortex in the darkness of space. When he had left her she had said goodbye but she had never thought it was forever, not really. How could she think that when he had always come for her? So many times it had seemed like the end, as if she had lost him, but always he had come back, had given her that reassuring grin as he pulled her back from what had too often been the brink of death. And afterwards, in the TARDIS, it had been 'Where now?' and although she had sometimes complained of deadlines, of him never taking her home as he had promised, secretly she had never minded his careless removal of her from the dullness of her everyday life.

So when he had dropped her off on that sunny morning two years ago, had told her not to forget him, she had still, deep down, believed the parting was only temporary. Once the initial clamour of coming home was past she had begun to look to her next adventure. To listen for the sound of the ancient engines grinding into existence. Sometimes, even to wake suddenly in the middle of the night, sure she had heard the familiar sound or caught the flash of a battered police box light. But he had not come. And as the months had passed, then a year, then two, she had come to realise that perhaps he never would, even that he had died – unthinkable though it seemed. Harry and the Brigadier could not understand her dwelling on the past (as Harry called it). Harry had been only too glad to leave the TARDIS; whilst for the Brigadier the coming of the Doctor had only ever heralded some potential crisis. Things seemed quieter now and for that he was glad. So Sarah had re-made her life. She'd spent time with her family, pursued her work and slid seamlessly back into 1970s Britain. It was a long time since she had run for anything other than a bus and even longer since she had last lost track of time. Hours, minutes, days and weeks were once again as normal to her as breathing and, as Harry frequently reminded her, that was how it should be.

As she slept later that night a clock ticked gently on her bedside table. But Sarah was unaware of it. She was dreaming she was in her room in the TARDIS where, despite the jumble of alien and more homely items, you would be unlikely to find a clock. The Doctor had, rather ironically she had thought, rather disapproved of the notion of clocks. As he had once pointed out, they had rather too much time on their hands as it was. Now, in her room, she lay on the bed listening to the gentle hum of the alien ship as she drifted to sleep. Suddenly the Doctor's voice sounded from all around her, he had favoured the loudspeaker approach to calling Sarah when he needed her. In her dream she jumped up and ran to the console room to find him there, coat off and tossed over an old chair, sonic screwdriver in hand, demanding her help with repairs. She had lost count of the amount of hours she had spent in this way, handing him various bizarre looking tools as he tinkered away keeping up a steady stream of random observations. But somehow they were her favourite times, in between all the running and the danger, the making of plans and quick thinking. She loved to just talk and remember that she was in an alien ship millions of miles from home, out of time. As the Doctor made one last adjustment the central column began slowly, then more steadily, to rise and fall signifying another journey, and, quite probably, another 'harmless' adventure.

As the sound of the TARDIS engines filled her head she woke, feeling tears on her face. In the darkness the engines sounded so real, just as she had half imagined them so many times. She closed her eyes, rubbing her face, then opened them to light streaming through her bedroom door. For a second she didn't dare to breathe, but only sat, still hunched under her heavy blankets, the tears rapidly drying on her face. She closed her eyes again, then opened them. The light was still there, and the sound – but now dying away, settling, leaving only a hum that was so familiar she almost mistook it for her own body. Then a creak, like a door opening, and he was there. A tall dark shadow at the door, the battered hat on his curly hair and the outline of the trailing scarf so unmistakable that her breath caught in her throat.

"Hello Sarah" the shadow said "any chance of a cup of tea? It's been a rather trying day". And then Sarah knew she wasn't dreaming, that it was really him and that he had come back. She took a deep breath, hardly knowing what to say after so long.

"I'm sorry but i'm out of milk. I didn't know you'd be coming" This seemed such a ridiculous, ludicrous understatement that she began to laugh and suddenly the tension in the room melted like ice.

"No milk? Then it will have to be Malcaissarian Cocoa, I'm rather fond of it myself, even if I did lose most of my hair the last time I tried it…" the shadow stepped forward into the light and Sarah saw that the Doctor was holding out a hand "I would have come and fetched you earlier you know, but one or two things cropped up." He grinned, pushing his hat further back on his head "are you coming?"

Sarah Jane Smith finally climbed out of bed. She stood on the thin carpet and looked around the cold bedroom, at the pile of notes stacked on her bedside table. She thought of her diary downstairs, full of appointments and lunches and deadlines and of her car waiting to be fixed. She thought of all the people who looked at the stars and never saw what she did and she thought of all those nights she had woken straining to hear engines that had not existed, hoping for a rescue from her life. But most of all she thought of the man in front of her, holding out his hand. She thought of him talking nonsense, teasing her and forever tinkering with that ship and she thought of him standing resolute against whatever danger the universe had thrown at them that day. In the TARDIS there was adventure and danger, and there was the Doctor's complete inability to steer. In this room there was only cold and the relentless ticking of the clock. The question the Doctor asked her was really no question at all. Reaching out she took his hand,

"Yes I am" If possible, the Doctor's grin widened as he swept her into a rib cracking hug. "But I'll reserve judgement on that cocoa" came Sarah's voice, muffled by his thick scarf.

"Agreed!" said the Doctor.

And as the clock ticked onwards Sarah pulled some clothes from her wardrobe, carefully picked up a pot plant from her window sill and followed the Doctor from the room. A door opened, then closed and then the cold air was filled with a wheezing, rasping sound, louder than any ticking, as a sudden breeze moved against the thin curtains and a light flashed, lighting up the room. And then there was silence and darkness once more, and the clock ticked steadily onwards in the empty room.

The End


End file.
